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Tom Smith
Experience
Head of Activity Analysis & Forecasting
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Nottingham
Present - Dec 2024
Leading a team of data analysts and data scientists producing operationally impactful analysis to inform senior leadership decision-making.
- Producing Demand and Capacity modelling methods, focusing on inpatient activity, beds, and operating theatres.
- Developing modelling to support NUH’s annual planning process, which seeks to balance patient activity, staff resource, and financial resource to arrive at achievable annual plan.
- Developing waiting list descriptive and simulation work, including outreach with stakeholders to propose different ways to approach existing problems (eg. queuing theory, Discrete Event Simulation, and digital twins).
- Developing capability for event-driven analytics, including by data-modelling and joining raw datasets which are not routinely used for decision-making.
- Forecasting hospital occupancy over periods of discontinuity in patient and staff behaviour, such as holiday periods, and strike periods.
Insight Manager
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Nottingham
Apr 2022
Leading the Business Intelligence (BI) & Analysis function in the Family Health division, including Maternity, Neonatal, Children’s Hospital, and Reproductive Health directorates.
- Implemented BI improvements giving leaders timely & consistent access to visual performance indicators
- Created productivity improvements to enable deep reporting with available resource
- Developed team skills, including move towards collaborative and reproducible analytical methods
- Built customer relationships to improve data literacy, including training on using Statistical Process Control (SPC) charts
- Ensured continuity of approx.100 timeseries metrics during replacement of complex Electronic Patient Record system
- Discrete Event Simulation of patient pathways
Principal Analyst (Maternity Improvement)
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Nottingham
Dec 2020
Developing analysis in support of the hospital’s Maternity Improvement Programme.
- Developed robust reporting pipelines for clinical and management data
- Improved engagement of the business with their data through outreach and linked storytelling
- Implemented Statistical Process Control techniques to separate signals from noise
- Enabled governance processes to be confident of the quality and repeatability of reported information
- Created new insights by combining datasets across sources
Paternity leave
Home
Nottingham
Sep 2019
Time at home with my young family, overlapping with the COVID pandemic. Decision to upskill in analytics.
- Learned the “R” statistical programming language
UK Head of Quality
Masonite International
Barnsley
Feb 2019
Led a team across 7 regional manufacturing facilities
- Introduced daily BI reporting of quality status for key sites at product line and manufacturing cell level (PowerBI)
- Managed internal & external customer feedback, scrap, rework, and raw materials consumption visibility
- Supervised regulatory compliance, including ISO 9001:2015 validation
Technical Engineering Manager
Door-Stop International (part of Masonite)
Huthwaite
Jan 2018
Managed a technical team through daily operations, new product introduction, and capital investment planning.
Continuous Improvement Champion
Door-Stop International (part of Masonite)
Huthwaite
Apr 2017
Enabled quality and delivery improvements through the use of data for problem solving, together with an engaged shop floor.
Business Transformation Coach
Sharing In Growth UK (hosted by Rolls-Royce)
Derby, London
Apr 2013
Leading a cross-functional improvement team on behalf of the UK Government. Raising the capability of UK aerospace suppliers to capture growth of the aerospace market and other associated high value manufacturing sectors.
- Led a team comprising Supplier development engineers, Value engineers, Manufacturing engineers, and Purchasing specialists
- Designed and delivered concentrated 4 year training and development programmes to UK Aerospace suppliers
- Quantified financial benefit
Lean Supplier Development leader
Rolls-Royce Plc
Derby, Paris
Apr 2017 - Feb 2012
Developing strategic supplier capability to meet quality, deliver, and cost requirements.
- Diagnosed opportunities for improvement
- Agreed development plans with supplier top management
- Delivered practical coaching of shop-floor and management to achieve improvements
- Quantified operational cost benefits
Senior Engineer (Supplier Production Management)
Toyota Motor Europe
Derby
Jun 2006
Tier 1 supplier production preparation - from draft drawing release to full volume production.
- Using core Toyota tools (Toyota Way, PDCA, Practical Problem Solving, Toyota Business Practices) to find facts at shop floor level, break down problems, find root causes, and agree and implement sustainable countermeasures
- Led production capacity confirmation, enabling fast vehicle launch ramp-up
- Built close working relationships between Design, Quality, Production Control, Vehicle Planning, Purchasing, and Tier 1 suppliers
- Led kaizen activity at Tier 1 suppliers
Selected public work
Health & Care Analytics Conference Conference E-lab
Anatomy of a waiting list
How well do we understand our waiting lists?
Online
2024
Video recording: https://youtu.be/3peqTEl_ZAQ?t=130
Package code: https://github.com/nhs-r-community/NHSRwaitinglist
Conference Talk
Beginner’s guide to the R package {purrr}
Online
2023
Video recording: https://youtu.be/laKYVuElROs&t=2146
Slides: https://thomuk.github.io/2023-NHSR-Conf-Presentation
Conference Talk
Introducing my {SPCreporter} R package
Online
2022
Video recording: https://youtu.be/fWYehE5U6Vs&t=2862
Slides: https://thomuk.github.io/2022-NHSR-Conf-Presentation
Education
Free Code Camp
Full Stack Web Development Certification
Online
2017 - 2016
University of Wales, Swansea
BEng (hons) Mechanical Engineering
Swansea
2002 - 1998